The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

A Study in False Moral Equivalence

by Jonathan S. Tobin The New York Times reports
today that a new study is attempting to downplay the role that
incitement to hatred in Palestinian schools is playing in fueling the
conflict. The study is the product of the Council of Religious
Institutions of the Holy Land, a left-leaning ecumenical group that is
partially financed by a grant from the U.S. State Department. The group
claims as its goal to promote peace and understanding and their study’s
conclusion purports to be as even-handed as their approach to peace.

But the report’s claim that there is a rough moral equivalence
between the attitudes of the Israeli and Palestinian education systems
toward the promotion of hate is so far removed from reality as to render
it useless as a measure of the problem. That study, which was rejected
by a number of the academics who were part of the group commissioned to
analyze the issue, must therefore be considered a contribution to the
propaganda war against Israel rather than an effort to pave the way for
accord between the two peoples.As the Times noted:

Arnon Groiss, another Israeli member of the advisory panel, an
Arabist, and the researcher and author of many previous reports critical
of the Palestinian Authority textbooks, also refused to endorse the
report, saying last week that he had not seen a final version. But he
insisted that the authority’s textbooks “prepare the pupils for a future
armed struggle for the elimination of the state of Israel.”

To seize on two points brought up in the Times article
highlights the dishonesty of such a conclusion. The report claims that
both school systems publish textbooks with maps that do not always show
the other side’s claims. In practice this means that some Israeli books
have maps that do not show the “green line” that marks the border
between the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel while all Palestinian books
depict both Israel and the territories as the state of Palestine.

That sounds like the same thing but it really isn’t. Israeli books
depict the reality that the Jewish state does have control over the
entire area. Asking them to show maps that show a state of Palestine
that doesn’t already exist is absurd. On the other hand, what the
Palestinians are showing not only contradicts reality but also shows
their dream of destroying Israel.

The other example is even more egregious. The Times skims
over the fact that the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority honors
suicide bombers and other terrorists not just in schools but also in
other venues. But it then compares this to the way Israeli schools honor
the memory of Josef Trumpeldor, the hero of the defense of Tel Hai.
Trumpeldor famously said after being fatally wounded that “Never mind,
it’s good to die for our country.” The report compares this to the ethos
of suicide bombers but the difference is that Trumpeldor died fighting
to defend Jews from slaughter at the hands of Arab attackers, not
deliberately sacrificing his life in order to kill innocents as the
terrorists do.

It needs to be understood that the research on Palestinian education
and media is voluminous and has left little doubt about the fact that
the PA uses the schools as well as TV and radio to promote a nationalist
spirit that sees the Jews as interlopers in the land which must be
cleansed of their presence. If that has changed, there needs to be
evidence that is not forthcoming. By contrast, peace education has been
an integral part of the curriculum in Israeli schools since the
beginning of the Oslo process 20 years ago. That means any assertion
that there is any comparison between what is going on in the schools
seems to hinge on the idea that telling the truth about the Palestinians
will undermine the tenuous hope for peace.

This kind of thinking is similar to the mistakes made by both the
United States government and some Israeli leaders who spent the 1990s
ignoring Palestinian violations of the peace accords because they
thought holding them accountable would derail negotiations. But, as
veteran peace processor Dennis Ross later admitted, this was a cardinal
error that only encouraged the Palestinians to trash any hope of peace
and led to the violence of the second intifada.

The point here is not just that this report is wrongheaded but that
it undermines hopes for peace rather than encouraging them. True
interfaith understanding rests on facing the facts about the two
different cultures, not pretending they are both the same when the
differences are so powerful.